The Pit #2
I didn’t have time to contemplate that either, because Monique went right into action.
The shriek the first one let out was abrupt when, with a swing of her blade staff, Monique cut the first one in two at the midriff, his blood spraying monstrously as the glamor flickered out and he instantly became visible when he received the wound.
His shriek might have been abrupt and short lived, but it was deafening in that chamber.
The pieces of his body fell to the platform floor.
I felt the sick instantly rising up, but Monique was already fighting another one.
This one invisible.
I couldn’t watch, not because I really didn’t want to (really!), but because I was grabbed from behind.
I had never so much as taken a self-defense class.
Either instinct or self-preservation set in, because without hesitation, I slammed my elbow back with all the force I could muster.
I heard his Oof! right before I bent viciously at the waist, throwing the invisible being over my head, and although I saw no one, I heard his body hit the stone floor.
I’d studied that shimmer on the picture for so long, I recognized it on the stone of the plateau.
Thus, I aimed a well-placed kick at it with all my strength.
I heard another Oof! and the shimmer went flying into the flames that, since our arrival, had risen dramatically higher.
Another shriek, this one longer as the being’s glamor burned off the instant he hit the flames and he immediately disappeared down into the pit.
I didn’t have the opportunity to go to the edge and see how far down he went.
I had another one on me.
I twisted out of his hold, turned on him and went hand to hand, kick for kick.
He thought he had an advantage.
But I hyper-concentrated on the waves of the air and could duck, sidestep, jump, and land my own strikes.
He still was stronger, backing me to the edge of the plateau.
Gods dammit!
This stopped when, with a crouching twirl, Monique cut both his feet off at the ankles with her staff.
I would never forget his scream of pain, or how it turned to fear while he listed over the side of the plateau, became visible, and like he was in slow motion (but none of this was happening in slow motion, not even close), he teetered into the flames, frantically grasping at air that would not stop him from falling.
He fell.
And I had two of them on me.
Monique was still battling others.
How many, I didn’t know.
I had to concentrate on what was going on with me.
The ones that had me were one too many, their strength was demonic, they had to be males, and they’d clearly cottoned on to the fact not only did I have help, but I wasn’t going down without a fight.
And I was fighting with everything I had.
They wrestled me to the edge, with me struggling all the way, screaming at the top of my lungs, clawing, tearing, kicking.
Oh gods, oh gods…
They were going to send me over the edge. No adopting a cat. No bringing the citadel back to its former glory. No planning my wedding with my mom.
No Tanyn.
They sent me over the edge.
I let out a piercing scream.
I heard Mon shriek, “No!”
But when I hit the flames, it felt like I hit a wall of fluffy pillows.
Holy Lilith.
And gently, the flames spit me out, back onto the plateau, feet safe on stone, body unscathed.
The waving shadows seemed staggered by this, I knew, because they were motionless.
A fatal mistake.
One materialized, his face a picture of shock. He started folding toward the plateau, and as he dropped, I saw Monique behind him, yanking her knuckle blade out of his back.
She kicked him into the flames and then turned to the other one.
He materialized when Monique’s staff pierced his throat from behind.
A spray of blood splashed all over me.
He gurgled.
I gagged.
Demon eyes stared at me.
They’d all been demons.
But demons could not glamor, only fae could.
Someone was handing out illegal potions.
And I had a feeling I knew who that someone was.
Monique yanked her staff out.
He fell to his knees and—his body jerking grotesquely, his mouth open, desperately trying to pull in air, his blood staining the dark stone—he went through the death throes at our feet.
When he went still, I noted Mon was breathing heavily, her chest rising and falling rapidly, her conjured weapons, something I thought only a fae could do, still radiating.
I was doing the same (without the weapons, of course).
We were staring at each other, but both of us were holding our bodies at the ready, concentrating on the feel of the space, trying to sense if there were more coming.
One second dragged into the next, and the next, and the next, as we both stayed tense and on alert.
Finally, she straightened and her weapons blinked out of her hands.
“Are we safe?” I whispered.
“For now,” she replied.
I rolled my shoulders and looked around the plateau.
It wasn’t that big.
But we were sharing it with one half of a whole being (in the fight, Monique must have nudged the other half of the first guy she killed over the edge), two severed feet, and two dead bodies.
The rest of them had gone over the sides.
I mean, was that just dumb luck (on my part, Mon obviously had some serious chops), or was I a latent badass?
And now, the flames were licking all the way up the walls, and because they were, I could see they were stories high.
The heat had to be immense.
I felt the scorch.
But strangely, I also didn’t feel it.
“Okay,” I snapped. “I think you have some explaining to do.” However, before she got to that… “Where the fuck is Tanyn?”
“He, Nayden, and the castle guard are battling another, much bigger, contingent of these assholes in the garden.”
I felt my blood run cold.
She cocked her head.
“Or, now…he’s racing to you,” she amended.
“He’s okay?”
“No. He’s pissed and freaked. But otherwise, he’s okay.”
“How do you know that?” I shook my head. “No. No. Let’s just get to him. He’ll be going out of his mind if he finds our bed empty. You can expl—”
I had started toward the bridge, but she caught my arm and stopped me.
“Mon, we need to—”
It was me who cut myself off when I saw the expression on her face.
“I will never leave you,” she said.
And my blood turned to shards of ice.
Why would she say that?
“What?” I whispered.
“I’ll always be there.”
“What are you talking about?”
“But now, they’ll know the Sisterhood of the Tribe is not extinct. I must go.”
Oh.
My.
Fucking.
Gods.
“As we have been, we’ll continue to watch over the four of you as best we can,” she continued.
We?
Who was we?
There were more of her?
More of the Sisterhood of the Tribe?
This was…
It was…
Crazy.
I went to grab her, but she took a step back.
“You sent the text comm that I was in danger.” It came out of my mouth like an accusation.
She nodded. “I did.”
“You saw one of those…beings”—I threw out an arm—“at Laura and Aleksei’s party.”
“I did,” she repeated. “I also chased after the being who tried to kill Laura. He was not after her beast, Cat. He was after her. And he would have ended her after he quelled her beast if I didn’t intervene.”
Suddenly, I was shivering. “You weren’t working for renos on your place.”
She shook her head.
“You were watching over us.”
She nodded.
“I don’t understand.”
“We will die for you, Catla, the Sacred Queen of Sky’s Edge, the fated mate of Tanyn Firefierce,” she whispered, and my insides seized. “As we will die for the others. We will not let it happen. We failed the last time. Not again.”
Her gaze moved beyond me, to the bridge, then it came back to me.
I watched a genuine Monique smile spread on her face.
I did this before she blinked out of sight.
Entirely.
One second there.
And then she was just…
Gone.
I knew no one who could do that.
It was then I heard sounds on the stairs.
And I felt him coming.
I turned just as I saw a streak flash across the bridge.
And Tanyn was standing in front of me.
Out the sides of my eyes I saw Nayden come out of his sprint behind him, but I could pay no mind to Nayden, because Tanyn’s hands were all over me.
“Fuck, fuck me, fuck, baby, fuck.” His fingers were smearing the blood that covered me.
“I’m fine. It’s not mine.” I grabbed hold of him. “Listen to me, look at me,” I urged when he seemed unable to process I was okay. I finally latched onto his face and held it to mine. “Honey, I’m fine.”
For a second, Tanyn didn’t move.
Then he crushed me in his arms.
He’d been so all over me, I hadn’t had a chance to get a good look at him.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Unscathed,” he grunted.
Okay.
Phew.
“How the fuck did you cut this one in half?” Nayden growled.
Tanyn twisted his head, looked down, and I felt his powerful frame jerk in surprise.
“I didn’t. Monique did.”
It was like Nayden didn’t hear me, because his next question was, “And are those…feet?”
Tanyn did hear me, however.
His arms around me spasmed and his voice was scary when he ordered, “Say that again?”
“First. Are you okay? Really,” I asked him.
“I’m fine. Nayden’s fine. We have some injured, one dead, as far as we know. But I felt your danger, and once we dealt with them, we didn’t hang around to assess.”
One dead.
Gods dammit.
“What the hells is this place?” Nayden asked, peering around. “And just to say, I have a lot of fucking questions. So maybe someone could start answering them.”
I felt his pain.
So I did my part. “Monique said she was a Sister of the Tribe.”
“Fucking hell,” Nayden bit.
Tanyn just held me tighter.
“They’re lore,” Nayden asserted.
“Apparently, they’re not,” I replied.
“Right, if that’s so, they don’t exist anymore,” Nayden said.
“Trust me, they do,” I replied.
“They fell off the face of the earth like a thousand fucking years ago,” Nayden clipped.
“I sense they did not,” I fired back. “I sense they went underground, because Mon used magic. She conjured weapons. These beings were demons.” I did another sweep of my arm.
“And there were more of them that went into the flames. As such, she had to fight with demon speed. She also had no trouble moving through the castle in the dark, even in the levels where it was dark.”
I turned to Tanyn and kept sharing.